Observations From the Spectrum

Time happened upon us like gravity once we moved away from the equator and started to farm. We became conscious of more than just survival, sex and food. Time introduced logic and with logic came responsibility for ALL.

Have you ever sat and looked out an old droopy glass window at the trees in the rain? It’s as if God has created a snapshot for you to look at and live in. In these moments it is where I find the most clarity in this world of cloudy ambiguity where facts now resemble mercury. The tighter we hold on to them, the more fluid they become.

Why is that? Why are we the only species uncertain about our purpose? It seems clear once a dash of logic is applied and sauteed in a pan of time. We are here to protect ourselves and the planet yet we are doing such a horrible job at both.

When time is baked with logic, the outcome should be better. It’s as simple as that. Identify a problem and then solve it, not hesitate. Hesitation gets us nowhere really. Imagine we are at bat and if we strike out, humanity ends not just for the players on the field but for all those watching. 

Isn’t that what Noah’s Arc is about? Man winning the game for the fans, the animals? Yet, more and more, we don’t see it like this. We see man as something outside the frame. As a photographer. It’s not the case. That role has and always will be taken by God or nature or however you want to define it. But we are not the creator. We are a player, a pawn in the game.

Noah’s Arc is an allegory. It teaches us that humans are here to protect all species on the planet. Not just his or hers. It is why the idea that fishing and hunting can be called sports is so vulgar. Neither is a sport unless you think abuse is also a sport, a parent beating their child or a spouse beating their partner. In some families it is seen as rearing the child and acceptable behavior, but nowhere is it seen as sport. Children are defenseless as is the victim.

Hunting and fishing are the same. The victims are defenseless. In the past beatings were supported. Corporal punishment for children by parent and educators alike and husbands beating their wives for infractions against the hearth. Today, both actions land you in jail. Why? Because logic was baked with time.

Humans differ from every other species on the planet because we have a relationship with time. And that relationship with time is evolution. We are not readymade. God, if that is how you think, did not create us perfect. It created us as a species with logic that baked for enough time could be perfect. That is the difference.

Cars and cell phones seem to be the perfect examples to illustrate logic being baked for enough time to create perfection. Imagine a world without cars? I can’t and I don’t like cars. I try not to drive them everyday but they are one of human’s closest attempts at perfection.

Humans were created slow, upright and relatively weak compared to all other species on the planet. It wasn’t until we solved the riddle of the wheel did we really find our stride. Before then, we were just another mammal with no relationship to time. We lived near the equator and every day was the same. Don’t get eaten. Find food to eat. 

With the wheel we learned to grow food and when we learned to grow food, we started down the path of time. It started ticking. We now waited for the bananas on our banana trees to ripen instead of foresting for them in the jungle. And over time that wheel evolved into the car. No longer were our feet burdened with walking, our butts burdened with uncomfortable seats or our noses burdened with the smell of shit. Cars were the perfection of human mobility. Anything here on out is just icing on the cake.

The cell phone was the same. Once upon a time one relative wanted to visit another or one village wanted to warn another about a danger or an imminent threat. First, there were runners. Then fire lighters on hills and lighthouses and such. Then the post and teh telegraph and now the cell phones which now sit by our sides day and night.

Both the cell phone and the automobile were perfect. They solved problems using logic and time. Both, however, today cause problems because both pollute the world. So much so that we are very quickly getting to the point in which we will need another ark to get us from this planet to Mars.

To me, that’s not perfection. We simply turned up the heat on the oven to broil when it needs to only be at a lower temperature to bake. Our cake is being ruined and it is being ruined by all who can’t see, understand or accept that humanity’s gift from God is the ability to understand time and change with it. 

Today, many things on the left side of the present belong there in the past as memories. Things that when they were in the present were the end all like the spear and the telegraph. Neither is needed in the now and neither will be needed again in the future. If you are stuck in the past, you are going against God’s gift and/or the natural flow of life and its beauty.